When comparing Forbidden Island vs T.I.M.E. Stories, the Slant community recommends Forbidden Island for most people. In the question“What are the best co-op board games?” Forbidden Island is ranked 6th while T.I.M.E. Stories is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Forbidden Island is:
Forbidden Island can be taught within a few minutes to absolutely anyone. It starts off slow and progressively leads into more complicated situations, so there’s time to get into the feel of the game. You only need to know how to do four actions, and the result of them is instantly visible, there’s pretty much nothing to micromanage.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Very accessible
Forbidden Island can be taught within a few minutes to absolutely anyone. It starts off slow and progressively leads into more complicated situations, so there’s time to get into the feel of the game. You only need to know how to do four actions, and the result of them is instantly visible, there’s pretty much nothing to micromanage.
Pro Cheap
The game retails for around $15, which is very cheap for the replay value and quality of the components that this game packs.
Pro Great physical components
The components of Forbidden Island are not only visually beautiful, but also durable, so they should hold up to wear and tear just fine. The game comes in a high-quality tin box and is full of thick and sturdy island tiles, durable cardstock cards, and eight treasure figures made of soft plastic.
Pro Beautiful artwork
The game looks amazing, it’s full of colorful high-quality artwork that really enhances the theme of treasure hunting on a mysterious island. The game’s box already gives a great first impression, featuring a big copy of the “Lighthouse” location tile. These locations that form the island have a huge variety of detailed and great-looking art on them.
On a design note, it is also very well done in the sense that it’s easy to distinguish which tiles are sinking, even in the blue-ish looking locations.
Pro Uncomplicated
The rules of Forbidden Island are straightforward. After setting up the map and choosing the difficulty, you are randomly assigned one of the six different classes. During your turn you can take up to three actions in total. All actions cost 1 point, you can move, shore up a drowning tile, give a treasure card to another player on the same tile, or collect a treasure. After that you draw two cards from the treasure card deck and take a number of flood cards equivalent to the water level.
The game is won when you play a “Helicopter lift” card on the “Fool’s Landing” tile while you have all players on it and you’ve uncovered all the treasures. There are many lose conditions – you can lose if the water level reaches the highest mark, if both the tiles housing the same treasure drown before you manage to get it, if the “Fool’s Landing” tile drowns, or if a player drowns.
Pro Varying difficulty
Forbidden Island lets you adjust the difficulty, which is great because you can adjust to the group you’re playing, be it a group of experienced gamers or your family. This is done by moving the slider on the water level meter to one of the four sections. Basically, you start with a higher initial water level.
Pro Good replayability
There are many variables to Forbidden Island that keeps it replayable. The cards you draw and the map you create will always vary and the fact that you get a random class makes the game feel different every time.
The six classes have highly different abilities, for example, the pilot can use an action point to fly to any tile on the island, the messenger can give treasure cards to another player anywhere on the map, and the engineer can shore up two tiles on the same turn for one action point.
Pro Innovative
T.I.M.E. Stories is unique both idea-wise and gameplay-wise. You could consider it a game system rather than a game itself – you basically play through multiple different scenarios based on the same rules and mechanics. It’s reminiscent of a point-and-click adventure game where players solve a huge puzzle together, except T.I.M.E. is a co-op board game. A loss is considered a reset, and you can use the valuable information you learned in your playthrough in your next runs.
There’s also an interesting “save-game” feature that you can use to stop the game and continue from where you left off the next time you come around. It’s done by placing the components in the box in a specific way – there are compartments that represent inventories, “time points”, health points, and the current room you’re in.
Pro Great artwork
T.I.M.E. Stories looks very impressive. The box, the gameboard, and all the components (apart from cards) feature a white, minimalistic, and sci-fi-ish design, but the really striking stuff is in the scenarios. Most of the art comes in the form of panorama location cards and characters cards. Each of the official scenarios is designed by a different team of artists, which creates huge variety in the aesthetics.
Pro Mechanically simple
The basics of the game are quite easy to understand. After setting up the gameboard, choosing characters, and mission briefing, players arrive in the first location and the panorama view of the room is revealed.
When you arrive, you choose which card you wish to examine and read the information on the back of the card. After that, you can spend your “time points” to take one of three actions – move to a different card, roll for something, or do nothing. When your time points reach zero, the scenario is over. If you didn’t manage to beat it, then you must restart it from scratch and keep doing that until you win.
Pro Official scenarios still developed
The creators of T.I.M.E. Stories are still working on future expansions for the game and play testing fan-made content for potential printings.
Pro Custom scenario possibilities
The official site of the board game features a downloadable scenario designer’s kit. It includes all elements you’d need – layouts, icons, etc. There are also multiple fan-made scenarios on board game geek that you can download.
Pro Immersive
T.I.M.E. Stories really pulls players in because of the gameplay design and the thematic nature. It’s like a point-and-click adventure game that requires you to solve puzzles by interacting with your surroundings, but in co-op board game format.
Throughout the game you’ll visit many locations and encounter all kinds of interesting stories and characters. Since you are not allowed to show others the event cards you get when you interact with objects or characters, players are constantly thinking along, communicating what they’ve found, and taking note of things to remember.
Pro Good components
The components of T.I.M.E. Stories are both fine-looking and durable. The gameboard itself is a big, sci-fi-looking surface with dedicated spaces for components. There are many types of cards – character cards, locations, maps, items, etc. They are all made of thick cardstock. The player markers are quite unique – they are wooden cylinders with colored stickers. The box also includes a variety of small cardboard tokens and special dice.
Cons
Con Quarterbacking / alpha-gamer issue
Forbidden Island suffers from the same issue as many cooperative games – a dominant player might make decisions for everyone. Table talk is absolutely necessary in this game to win, and the fact that everyone’s cards are visible, and the discard pile can be looked through doesn’t help the problem.
Con Many luck elements
Pretty much everything that happens in this game revolves around the cards that are drawn. The map itself is set up by drawing tiles, so you can get very unlucky with the placement of the “Fool’s Landing” tile and the distance to the treasure locations you need to reach in order to win. You can also get unlucky with the treasure card deck that has some “Water Rising” cards shuffled in between – if you draw a few of these in quick succession, you might make important locations sink and lose straightaway.
Con Possibly too light for experienced gamers
The game is very similar to Pandemic, but much easier in the sense that it sacrifices many concepts in favor of accessibility. Due to this Forbidden Island might feel repetitive, simplistic, and not very complex to a more experienced gamer because there are not as many strategic possibilities.
Con Not replayable
Once you’ve finished a scenario, there’s little real reason to return to it and play the game again because you will have already experienced the unique stories and solved the puzzles.
Con Requires a dedicated group
Similarly to many co-op board games, it can be hard to gather the same people to see a game of T.I.M.E. Stories through. The fact that the first couple of runs will probably be unsuccessful don’t really help the situation.
Con Not very accessible
While the game isn’t necessarily difficult, chances that someone will finish the scenario on their first run are very slim, which could turn away many newcomers. It can also take approximately two hours to finish a run and five to six hours to finish the scenario.
Con Very pricey
The base game retails for around $50, which is a big investment for only one scenario and the components. Moreover, each official scenario goes for an extra $20 - $30, so you should know if you’ll make the most of your purchase.
Con Can get repetitive
Once you run out of “time points” you must re-run the entire scenario. While you will have the knowledge of ways to solve many puzzles, it can be irritating to blast through the same situations you’ve been in.
Con Luck-based elements
The game requires you to roll dice to finish some encounters, which can be a huge turn-off to a game that basically requires you to solve a puzzle in a limited amount of time. The dice-rolling mechanic makes the overall gameplay much slower and can lead to some frustrating moments when you crack the puzzle but just keep getting unlucky rolls.